US Elections 2012 Part II: The Conventions, Debates and Election results

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It started in the late 60s quietly when the GOP happily welcomed racist Southern "Dixiecrats" running from the Democrat Party after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But for a couple of decades it was pretty quiet. We had Nixon, who by today's standards would be quite liberal (opened up China to the West, started EPA, etc.). Ford was a fiscal conservative but quite mild in perspective. Reagan... was pragmatic and raised taxes but here's where we start to see a real shift in the *people* that are part of an administration. We had James Watt, for example, a young earth end times wacko heading up the Interior Department. We had a big banking crisis with corrupt Senators, a big stock market crash due to deregulation. Bush, Sr. was the last "old style" Republican and the anti-tax faction of the GOP buried him for making the same sort of compromises Reagan did. In the early '90s we had Contract With America ala Newt Gingrich and a big scare in '94 when enough people thought the Democrats were going to go nuts with firearms bans that the House flipped to the GOP for the first time in 40 years (whatever you think about guns, it was a badly written ineffective idiotic piece of legislative garbage and it cost the Dems the House).

That flip gave the social wingnuts their first serious influence in the GOP and the "country club" Republicans leveraged those hot button issues happily while they began the starvation of public services, the privatization (transfer of wealth and loss of bang-for-buck), and the deregulation of all large corporate and banking activities.

Somewhere in the late '90s, the traditional GOP "blue bloods" started to lose control of the party to the social conservatives but I don't think they realized it until this year. Complicating matters are the plutocrats who are both "libertarian" AND "cult zealot wingnuts". Those 40 or 50 billionaire nutcases are the ones flooding dollars into the election this year thanks to the Citizens United ruling.

And most of you are old enough to remember the election flip of 2000, as we've discovered, that key states were flipped via vote count suppression to throw the election to the Supreme Court (Reagan appointees) who handed the election to Bush, Jr.

There's something very Orwellian about watching the neo-cons of today and their history revisionism, their inability to critically reason, or to even know when they're saying things that get them in trouble.... like Mr. "Facts Don't Matter" today.
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The current Republican Party has to get into power. That is why they are forcibly stacking the deck in their favor with all this voter registration hoopla. They need to get into power for the simple reason that by 2020 the parties main base will be gone. While older people can still definitely be scared into submission, the Republican Party will soon have to deal with an older generation that has always been Democrats. And, with the white vote swiftly becoming a minority vote, the Republicans will have to deal with a country composed of a former minority that is almost completely Democratic.

The Republicans need to be in power now because it is quickly getting to the point where they will have no way to get into power again. This is the only time (the next 8 years) that they can put into place any of the laws they need to create what they feel to be an ideal environment for their businesses and the protection of their wealth and their families.

Spot on analysis. The Democrats already dominate the youth and minority votes, but polling shows women are now more likely to vote Democrat as well. That leaves a voting block for the GOP that is basically older white people, generally male. It should be no coincidence that this is also the general makeup of the party and their financiers. They're on borrowed time.

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Previous conventions have not been this bad (not for a long while). The exclusiveness of this conventions seems very similar to the extreme exclusive Goldwater convention of 1964. The Party is now being defined more by what they are not rather that what they are or can be. It's sad, but an obvious doubling down on their message of extreme conservatism in the face of obvious and unstoppable progress/change. Fear controls the Party, and it is destroying everything the GOP once stood for.

It's not just the national convention, they've been screwing with the voting process in their own party for a while now. They're not just trying to mess with voting laws outside the party, but their own rules as well. Here's an example from Oklahoma earlier this year:

Spot on analysis. The Democrats already dominate the youth and minority votes, but polling shows women are now more likely to vote Democrat as well. That leaves a voting block for the GOP that is basically older white people, generally male. It should be no coincidence that this is also the general makeup of the party and their financiers. They're on borrowed time.

I'm not sure, a lot of people switch to the republicans as they get older, and if anything, a lot of people are getting older. You could say that people are aging into the republicans.

Furthermore, older voters are a lot more reliable. Young voters are a lot more fickle, and will only vote if the feel like it. Furthermore, while we know that the youth of today will vote democrat, we don't know what the opinions of the youth will be 10 years from now, as currently they're all 9 or 10. The political landscape can easily change.

And the ideas of Ayn Rand are becoming increasingly popular among certain segments of the youth, making up a large contingent of the radical right in the Republican party.

Spot on analysis. The Democrats already dominate the youth and minority votes, but polling shows women are now more likely to vote Democrat as well. That leaves a voting block for the GOP that is basically older white people, generally male. It should be no coincidence that this is also the general makeup of the party and their financiers. They're on borrowed time.

Yep, and GOP knows that and that is the reason why they are trying to get after the Black and Latina votes (Good Luck with that) but they burn too many bridges with them and they are scaring off the women votes as well.

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I'm not sure, a lot of people switch to the republicans as they get older, and if anything, a lot of people are getting older. You could say that people are aging into the republicans.

Furthermore, older voters are a lot more reliable. Young voters are a lot more fickle, and will only vote if the feel like it. Furthermore, while we know that the youth of today will vote democrat, we don't know what the opinions of the youth will be 10 years from now, as currently they're all 9 or 10. The political landscape can easily change.

And the ideas of Ayn Rand are becoming increasingly popular among certain segments of the youth, making up a large contingent of the radical right in the Republican party.

I dont know, if Ryan has his way and changed Medicare/Medicad(?), I bet you those senior citizens will change their tune quick. I know that landscape can change but right now, I think they need to change themselves back to the GOP of decades ago, not the Tea-Party verison of it.

I'm not sure, a lot of people switch to the republicans as they get older, and if anything, a lot of people are getting older. You could say that people are aging into the republicans.

That was the case before they went batshit insane. I don't think it's so true anymore. I'd say nowadays, it's more likely that one is "independent" or third party, and grows into being a Democrat when they realize fringe can't win.

I'm not sure, a lot of people switch to the republicans as they get older, and if anything, a lot of people are getting older. You could say that people are aging into the republicans.

Furthermore, older voters are a lot more reliable. Young voters are a lot more fickle, and will only vote if the feel like it. Furthermore, while we know that the youth of today will vote democrat, we don't know what the opinions of the youth will be 10 years from now, as currently they're all 9 or 10. The political landscape can easily change.

And the ideas of Ayn Rand are becoming increasingly popular among certain segments of the youth, making up a large contingent of the radical right in the Republican party.

I'm not sure on that. The boomer generation came from the progressive era. Even among conservatives for that era, things were more progressive. It's true that people become more conservative as they age, but I don't think there will be that large of a shift. As for Ayn Rand's popularity, I'm not buying it. Youth are always fickle, as you point out, but they're consistently liberal....when they actually vote.

Mind you, I'm not stating that conservatives will be wiped out due to sheer demographics. I just suspect that we'll see a movement greatly diminished by their refusal to admit that the world is changing. It's a cyclical thing. Happens to the Democrats too. They'll either adapt or die. American history is littered with parties no longer relevant anymore.

If it is hard to hear, the delegates are shouting "USA!" and "Kick them out!" to the Republican speaker from Puerto Rico who is trying to give her report and becomes tearful. These mostly slovenly, slack-jawed jackasses are the current day face of the GOP.

I'm not sure, a lot of people switch to the republicans as they get older, and if anything, a lot of people are getting older. You could say that people are aging into the republicans

Solace wrote on this already, but I'll simplify the discussion a little bit: It's all about context. The Baby Boomers switching to the Republican Party was based on their own Economic experience shaped by the highs and lows of the 70s and the 80s. Additionally, there were Republican leaders who could form coherent thoughts not based in fear, and who did not build entire careers based on division. We do not live in those times, nor do we have those leaders, so I expect the trend toward the Republican party for older Americans will significantly decrease over the next few decades (it certainly doesn't help that the baby boomers were an extraordinarily large generation, unlike subsequent generations).

I'll just say that I know quite a few people in my age bracket (50-60) who are shifting to Dem from Republican. The Dems are essentially fiscally shifted right to where the GOP used to be (e.g. we should have good schools, roads, infrastructure, etc.) and the GOP fixation on social issues, especially the rampant misogyny is simply turning people off in droves. Couple that with the GOP's unabashed worship of the "new US aristocracy" and... yeah, you have to pretty obstinate (see "facts don't matter") to stay GOP unless you're part of that very small aristocracy.

Mind you, I'm not stating that conservatives will be wiped out due to sheer demographics. I just suspect that we'll see a movement greatly diminished by their refusal to admit that the world is changing. It's a cyclical thing. Happens to the Democrats too. They'll either adapt or die. American history is littered with parties no longer relevant anymore.

I'd like to think you're right, but things only seem to be swinging more and more to the Republicans.

The fact is that over the last 30 years the far right has grown more and more powerful in American politics. The baby boomer generation was a fairly progressive generation (they campaigned for civil rights, stopped the Vietnam war...), and yet we are where we are in spite of that.

And it's possible for a radical minority to dominate politics and seize power against an apathetic and demoralized majority. That happened a lot in the 30s, and those radicals turned their states into dictatorships. The same could happen again.

Or things could change towards more enlightened politics. I'd like to see this happen, but I can't call it. Trying to foresee these kind of things is incredibly hard.

And radical forces are not just growing in the USA. It's happening in Europe too(it's a bit less visible, but it's there). As the economy continues to stagnate people become more disenchanted of modern liberal capitalism, and desperate enough to try anything.

I think a lot of it depends on how the economy goes.If we get a "lost decade" Japanese style, all bets are off. Look at how weak the political order is in Japan. And unlike Japan, we already have a radical front on our doorstep winning elections.

The Baby Boomers may have been progressives, but several of them died during the 60s and 70s and many of their more progressive heroes died as well. By the 80s they had children and needed to be economically conservative to survive the results of their progressiveness mixed with what corperations could get away with. (One thing some conservatives today point to as a problem was the results of Women's Lib. Not that women are in the workforce, but the two problems that resulted from it, or in reaction to it.
One: Who is taking care of the children if both parents work?
Two: If both parents work, then various corperations and government institutions decided that two income families would be the baseline. If one parent didn't work, you would likely be lower class or lower-middle class just from what was left of your income after expenses. This starts to make what was the "American Dream" from their parent's era, closer to improbable.)

Also there was always the "Silent Majority" that was supposedly conservative in the 60s and 70s. They might have become reactionary by the 80s after being silent for too long.

Also the world changed, as did America's place in the world between the progressive 60s and the 80s. By the end of the 70s the US was depressed as a nation. The lose in Vietnam, the end of the moon landing, the oil embargos, Iranian and Libyian terrorism (hostiges both in Iran and airliners), and a general decline of feeling that we were special anymore dragged the progressive down (the drugs might not have helped either...some bad trips by the end of the 70s took some of their most influencial). Reagan came at a time when the US was emotionally depressed. His Hollywood style of white hats and black hats for the US and USSR was pretty much what we needed to come out of out emotional depression. There was still a worry about WWIII happening, but not as much as it had been during Carter's year (the late 70s gave us the Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century TV series were WWIII was in 1987. The series ended only a few months after Reagan took office). As the Cold War ramped up to its ending, the American patriot returned in place of the "old hippie" progressives. Many of then had been "old hippie" progressives, but this was a different time. With the Soviets turning towards a peacful solution, capitalism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and eventually the fall of the Soviet Union, the white hat/black hat ways of Reagan seemed to be the way to go. Save there was no longer someone to put the black hat on.

So in the 90s, some of the progressives came out again, but the 80s had changed a lot of them. And even though the US had won the Cold War, it was now lost without someone to put the black hat on. Come 9/11 and the last decade, we found Terrorist to put the black hat on...but it isn't the same if you can't pin the hat to a country or group of peoples without also having to put a white hat on others in that same country or group of peoples. This was the time we got Dark Dramas, were they was no black hat or white hats...everyone was an asshole in some way, or everyone was evil in their own way. There were no good guys anymore on television (this was about the time I stopped watching US television).

And now were are here....today. The American progressives sort of got lost somewhere in the 80s and 90s. We are still looking for someone we can solidly place the black hat on, while failing to cleanup our white hat that's been in the mud for the last decade...perhaps two.

Watching John McCain attack Obama on foreign policy. While he is one of the few who can attack on foreign policy, it is ultimately a fruitless and very hard method of attack ( Obama's greatest accomplishments have been in foreign policies) especially for a novice like Romney who even failed at a European press tour. (Why McCain feels Romney should attack the world is also a little weird, but that's just current day McCain.)

I have to agreed with GDB about this, Ryan isnt stupid about Homosexual ISSUES but he is still going to follow the GOP way of thinking about that. But I look at it alittle bit and I am shocking to see so many people wants Romney as President, with they call him a true leader for this country. SMH

Obama wasnt perfect and he had a divided Congress to deal with (Even with Romney, it will be the same problem if Dems holds on to the Senate but if GOP is Majority in the Senate, oh boy) but he did what he could have done as president but Romney a true leader for this country, please.

What I don't get is what I heard on TV yesterday. The biggest group of Romney supporters is white, male, BLUE COLLAR workers. What? Romney is so out of touch with the common American and people who have to work hard to support their families and themselves. This is the guy that thinks corporations are people. Apparently, Romney thinks these 'people' (corporations) deserve a lot more freedoms, rights, and compassion than homosexuals and women. SMH - Actually, you could say that for a lot of GOP officials. SMH x 100